Hard at Work in the Jobless Future: Jobs Are Disappearing, but There's Still a Future for Work. an Investment Manager Looks at How Automation and Information Technology Are Changing the Economic Landscape and Forcing Workers to Forge New Career Paths beyond Outdated Ideas about Permanent Employment

Hard at Work in the Jobless Future: Jobs Are Disappearing, but There's Still a Future for Work. an Investment Manager Looks at How Automation and Information Technology Are Changing the Economic Landscape and Forcing Workers to Forge New Career Paths beyond Outdated Ideas about Permanent Employment

Lee, James H., The Futurist

Futurists have long been following the impacts of automation on jobs--not just in manufacturing, but also increasingly in white-collar work. Those in financial services, for example, are being lost to software algorithms, intelligent computers, and robotics.

Terms used for this phenomenon include "off-peopling'' and "other-sourcing." As Jared Weiner of Weiner, Edrich, Brown recently observed, 'Those jobs are not going to return--they can be done more efficiently and error-free by intelligent software."

In the investment business (in which I work), we are seeing the replacement of financial analysts with quantitative analytic systems, and floor traders with trading algorithms. Mutual funds and traditional portfolio managers now compete against ETFs (exchange-traded funds), many of which offer completely automated strategies.

Industries that undergo this transformation don't disappear, but the number of jobs that they support changes drastically. Consider the business of farming, which employed half the population in the early 1900s but now provides just 3% of all jobs. The United States is still a huge exporter of food; it is simply a far more efficient food producer now in terms of total output per farm worker.

In an ideal world, jobs would be plentiful, competitive, and pay well. Most job opportunities have two of these qualities but not all three. Medicine, law, and finance are jobs that are both competitive and pay well. Retail, hospitality, and personal services are competitive but pay low wages. Unions often ensure that jobs pay well and are plentiful, only to later find that those jobs and related industries are no longer competitive.

Since 1970, manufacturing jobs as a percentage of total employment have declined from a quarter of payrolls to less than 10%. Some of this decline is from outsourcing, some is a result of other sourcing. Those looking for a rebound in manufacturing jobs will likely be disappointed. These jobs will probably not be replaced--not in the United States and possibly not overseas, either.

This is all a part of the transition toward a postindustrial economy.

Jeff Dachis, Internet consulting legend and founder of Razorfish, coined the phrase "everything that can be digital, will be." To the extent that the world becomes more digital, it will also become more global. To the extent that the economy remains physical, business may become more local.

The question is, what is the future of work, and what can we do about it? Here are some ideas.

The Future of Work: Emerging Trends

Work will always be about finding what other people want and need, and then creating practical solutions to fulfill those desires, Our basic assumptions about how work gets done are what's changing. It's less about having a fixed location and schedule and more about thoughtful and engaged activity. Increasingly, this inspiration can happen anytime, anyplace

There is a blurring of distinctions among work, play, and professional development. The ways that we measure productivity will be less focused on time spent and more about the value of the ideas and the quality of the output. People are also going to have a much better awareness of when good work is being done.

The old model of work provided an enormous level of predictability. In previous eras, people had a sense of job security and knew how much they would earn on a monthly basis. This gave people a certain sense of confidence in their ability to maintain large amounts of debt. The consumer economy thrived on this system for more than half a century. Location-based and formal jobs will continue to exist, of course, but these will become smaller slices of the overall economy.

The new trends for the workplace have significantly less built-in certainty. We will all need to rethink, redefine, and broaden our sources of economic security. To the extent that people are developing a broader range of skills, we will also become more resilient and capable of adapting to change. …

The rest of this article is only available to active members of Questia

Note: primary sources have slightly different requirements for citation. Please see these guidelines for more information.

Cited article

Hard at Work in the Jobless Future: Jobs Are Disappearing, but There's Still a Future for Work. an Investment Manager Looks at How Automation and Information Technology Are Changing the Economic Landscape and Forcing Workers to Forge New Career Paths beyond Outdated Ideas about Permanent Employment

Print this page

While we understand printed pages are helpful to our users, this limitation is necessary
to help protect our publishers' copyrighted material and prevent its unlawful distribution.
We are sorry for any inconvenience.